I revisited Katrina's class last Thursday to bounce some ideas around with her about my zones as I had been noticing that our tamariki weren't engaging in activities for as long as they had been and we were having to rotate every ten minutes and we often only made it to 10.00

I knew Katrina took her zones right through to lunch time and thought i was ready for some fine tuning. Looking around Katrina's class I was able to think of new ways to tweak my zones, Katrina offered some great ideas and encouragement and I was ready to give things a try. The next day I shared my ideas with Angela and with her encouragement we redesigned the zones for Monday with lots more choices and we also introduced maths activities within the zones too.

New introductions included the maths area, play dough, floor puzzles, whiteboard activities, tamariki led writing table and a number of other activities. We wanted them to have a greater choice that captured their interest longer and encouraged group interaction and problem solving and teamwork.

On Monday Angela and I was amazed at how things went, after introducing tamariki to the new zones they were excited to make a start and were so engaged in their activities that we didn't rotate zones until after 30 minutes! There was great cooperation and a greater focus group-wide. There was only one zone that didn't work as well as we hoped but with the introduction of a couple of extra activities, it worked just as well as the others.

These two terms have been an enormous learning curve for me and I am finally feeling more comfortable and confident in what I am doing. I am excited and so looking forward to next year as I will know what works well and how I like to 'run' my class, I will be able to continue to build upon my resources and will continue to streamline my zones and will trial a way of recording them in term one next year.